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Lot Essay
Painted in Paris in 1959, Chu Teh-Chun's Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain) (Lot 22) is one of his most stunning early abstract works, deriving from the period in which he first established his unique and original style. This painting is also crucial to an understanding of his creative blend of Eastern and Western influences, and how it developed and matured.
Chu Teh-Chun, in Remembering Wu Dayu, described how calligraphy, with the additional inspiration of nature, became part of his oil painting style: 'With Wu Dayu as my teacher, I came to worship Cézanne, and during those years in China, my work never strayed far from the Post-Impressionist camp. But in 1952 I was painting scenes on Pa-hsien Mountain, and there, on that peak over 2000 meters high, surrounded by deep valleys, mists, and forests, I had a sudden insight about Chinese ink-wash painting. I understood its use of form and empty space, and the relationship of its poetic, traditional spirit with nature. The thick mists around me were interlaced with branches of pine and cypress, reminding me of the brushwork used in calligraphy. At the same time, they rekindled the moods I had when I was first learning painting and calligraphy, and somehow, from that point on, my ideas about painting had changed.'
In a 1953 work, Pa-hsien Mountain (Fig. 1), Chu's depiction of craggy forest scenery already reveals brushwork rhythms borrowed from calligraphy, and his lyrical handling of the brush. But the meaning of Chinese ink and brush styles, and their emotional dimensions, could only generate new creative energies within the trend toward abstract painting, and Chu extracted their essence while escaping the bounds of traditional forms. A work painted by Chu with a palette knife during the mid-'50s, Une Rue (A Street) (Fig 2), still clearly seems influenced by Nicolas de Staël (Fig. 3), yet Chu breaks down the restrictive geometric forms and finds a sense of movement in his lines. The result is a work with a kind of spatial imagery and living energy very different from de Sta?l. By the late 1950s, Chu Teh-Chun had already undergone a huge stylistic shift: from figuration to abstraction, and further, from abstraction to landscape imagery. He gradually drew upon the deep inner reserves of his native culture, and, in the element of line, found a path back to nature. The energy of ink and brush painting hidden in Pa-hsien Mountain and Une Rue (A Street) finally emerge in the bold, unconstrained, and particularly Eastern language of abstraction found in Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain), a painting whose significance as a milestone in Chu Teh-Chun's work can hardly be overstated.
In Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain), Chu's blocks of warm, lively colour become vibrating lights, while calligraphic lines sweep with ease up, down, and across the painting. An image of the natural world comes alive as mountain shapes rise and fall, advance and recede. Chu has clearly mastered the techniques of both the Post-Impressionists (Fig. 4) and abstract art, and wields them freely; at the same time he projects the unique grandeur behind the aesthetics of ancient Chinese landscape paintings (Fig. 5). The ease and grace of his inky black lines both form the image and transcend it. The lighter colours near the center appear like the glow of distant light filtering through twigs and branches, thus evoking the 'lumière' (light) of the title. Behind Chu's fine technical handling of his subject lies the genuine conviction of Chinese painters to "paint what they feel" within any natural landscape they see, and viewers may be especially excited to see the early hints of Chu's "light of the universe" that appear in this work.
In the watercolour sketches with which he documented his works, Chu listed the sketch for Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain) as Composition No. 41 (Fig. 6). Based on those sketches, Chu in this work presents a much richer palette of colour than in other abstract compositions from the same period, and the forest image he constructs out of lines and patches of light is also the most vivid. It surely represents deep and happy memories of Taiwan and the scenes at Pa-Hsien Mountain.
Chu Teh-Chun made the Chinese aesthetics of nature, and their impressionistic lines, a part of the pure visual spaces of Western European abstraction. He succeeded fabulously at adding colour to the Chinese tradition, which revered the mental conception above all else. In his later years he said that even if Eastern and Western art differed in their tools and their media, they were still linked at the highest levels. The light that bursts forth from Chu's Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain)is an exciting revelation of this convergence of Eastern and Western culture, and the starting point from which Chu Teh-Chun would continue its pursuit.
Chu Teh-Chun, in Remembering Wu Dayu, described how calligraphy, with the additional inspiration of nature, became part of his oil painting style: 'With Wu Dayu as my teacher, I came to worship Cézanne, and during those years in China, my work never strayed far from the Post-Impressionist camp. But in 1952 I was painting scenes on Pa-hsien Mountain, and there, on that peak over 2000 meters high, surrounded by deep valleys, mists, and forests, I had a sudden insight about Chinese ink-wash painting. I understood its use of form and empty space, and the relationship of its poetic, traditional spirit with nature. The thick mists around me were interlaced with branches of pine and cypress, reminding me of the brushwork used in calligraphy. At the same time, they rekindled the moods I had when I was first learning painting and calligraphy, and somehow, from that point on, my ideas about painting had changed.'
In a 1953 work, Pa-hsien Mountain (Fig. 1), Chu's depiction of craggy forest scenery already reveals brushwork rhythms borrowed from calligraphy, and his lyrical handling of the brush. But the meaning of Chinese ink and brush styles, and their emotional dimensions, could only generate new creative energies within the trend toward abstract painting, and Chu extracted their essence while escaping the bounds of traditional forms. A work painted by Chu with a palette knife during the mid-'50s, Une Rue (A Street) (Fig 2), still clearly seems influenced by Nicolas de Staël (Fig. 3), yet Chu breaks down the restrictive geometric forms and finds a sense of movement in his lines. The result is a work with a kind of spatial imagery and living energy very different from de Sta?l. By the late 1950s, Chu Teh-Chun had already undergone a huge stylistic shift: from figuration to abstraction, and further, from abstraction to landscape imagery. He gradually drew upon the deep inner reserves of his native culture, and, in the element of line, found a path back to nature. The energy of ink and brush painting hidden in Pa-hsien Mountain and Une Rue (A Street) finally emerge in the bold, unconstrained, and particularly Eastern language of abstraction found in Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain), a painting whose significance as a milestone in Chu Teh-Chun's work can hardly be overstated.
In Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain), Chu's blocks of warm, lively colour become vibrating lights, while calligraphic lines sweep with ease up, down, and across the painting. An image of the natural world comes alive as mountain shapes rise and fall, advance and recede. Chu has clearly mastered the techniques of both the Post-Impressionists (Fig. 4) and abstract art, and wields them freely; at the same time he projects the unique grandeur behind the aesthetics of ancient Chinese landscape paintings (Fig. 5). The ease and grace of his inky black lines both form the image and transcend it. The lighter colours near the center appear like the glow of distant light filtering through twigs and branches, thus evoking the 'lumière' (light) of the title. Behind Chu's fine technical handling of his subject lies the genuine conviction of Chinese painters to "paint what they feel" within any natural landscape they see, and viewers may be especially excited to see the early hints of Chu's "light of the universe" that appear in this work.
In the watercolour sketches with which he documented his works, Chu listed the sketch for Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain) as Composition No. 41 (Fig. 6). Based on those sketches, Chu in this work presents a much richer palette of colour than in other abstract compositions from the same period, and the forest image he constructs out of lines and patches of light is also the most vivid. It surely represents deep and happy memories of Taiwan and the scenes at Pa-Hsien Mountain.
Chu Teh-Chun made the Chinese aesthetics of nature, and their impressionistic lines, a part of the pure visual spaces of Western European abstraction. He succeeded fabulously at adding colour to the Chinese tradition, which revered the mental conception above all else. In his later years he said that even if Eastern and Western art differed in their tools and their media, they were still linked at the highest levels. The light that bursts forth from Chu's Lumière de la Montagne Pa-Shin (Light of Pa-Shin Mountain)is an exciting revelation of this convergence of Eastern and Western culture, and the starting point from which Chu Teh-Chun would continue its pursuit.